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Sunday, November 21, 2010

On selling things

For about a year now (feels like a decade), I've been wanting to have a garage sale. Because our house is full of excess furniture, and ugly items. For those that don't know, we basically bought my boyfriends' parents' house and when they moved out... they didn't take much with them.

Which is great, because we inherited a fridge, freezer, dishwasher, washing machine and dryer. But bad, because we also inherited all the old ugly furniture and every single knick-knack they'd collected and hoarded over the past 15 years.

Since we bought the house nearly 2 years ago, I've continually wondered how a person could accumulate so much "stuff" that must be important (because it wasn't thrown away) and then not want to take it with them when they moved to another city. In my various spurts of cleaning out cupboards lately, I've found things such as C's mum's entire photo album collections, C's grandfather's war medals, certificates, awards, an entire collection of Elvis memorabilia and a whole lotta "stuff" that C won't let me throw out or sell because it's an heirloom, or important, or he just likes it.

But I managed to convince him we need to get rid of some of the larger items. Because it's a damned small house, and we have a serious storage problem. I want to replace the old sideboards and cabinets with bookshelves and the like.

So I finally set a date for our garage sale, and we spent two evenings lugging furniture and books out to the garage.

I haven't mentioned the books yet, but there were plenty. All mine, so I take fully reponsibility for my book-buying habit. I really need to get rid of some (to make room for more, you see).

Anyway, 7am finds C in bed (he worked really late and only got home at 5am) and me sitting in our garage realising I have done no advertising and my signs suck.

No customers for the first hour and a half. Only one random guy who came up and asked if I'd like him to mow his lawn. With our own lawnmower and petrol. For $20. I said no.

Luckily then my parents arrived and immediately started bustling about. Dad went down the street and stuck my signs to the street post. Mum helped with price labels. And at last I could leave them to watch the "shop" and get myself a blessed cup of tea.

Ended up we only sold a few items - some pot plants (which my parents brought with them as part of a clever marketing scheme, to draw punters in) and a single book. I think we made $8.

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Welcome to Surely Sarah

Hi, I'm Sarah! I'm 33 and searching for my passion.
Until then, I slog away in a cubicle working full-time and focus on enjoying my downtime with things like TV (my old friend), movies, twitter, (trying to) cook, reading and hanging out with my hubby. My head is turned by things like vintage homewares, stationery, chocolate and scrapbooking. I blog about whatever takes my fancy.